Duo
by Jacadiee
Summary: Songfic done to Metallica's One. 'Hold my breath as I wish for death, Oh please God wake me'


_I cant remember anything  
Cant tell if this is true or dream  
_

"He can't f-feel it can he?" Relena sobbed brokenly from the shelter oh Heero's warm embrace. She begged desperately that Duo could not feel, did not know what had happened to him. She prayed to God that the happy go lucky Shinigami with the devil may care attitude knew nothing of how he now was.

Over her head of honey hair, Heero asked that same question of Sally Po who stood beside Wufei. The tired doctor shook her head,

"There are no signs that he's even truly awake, he can't feel anything," she continued the answer mentally not telling the others that the morphine in his iv was the maximum dosage they could use and that he was certainly still in pain. She wan an experienced surgeon, especially in matters such as these, where the patient was a soldier; experience in the field told her that the morphine was not nearly enough to take away the pain.

_Deep down inside I feel to scream  
This terrible silence stops me  
_

In the white walled rooms, a continuous sound filled the air, the sound of pain, of sickness, of death. Machines surrounded a young man who lay in the small hospital bed. Though his eyes were closed, long lashes hiding indigo orbs, the braided man felt the need to scream.

He was not truly awake, but his subconscious needed the release of sound echoing from him, screaming his torment to the world. Inwardly Duo despised the body, the wounds that held his voice in chains.

_  
Now that the war is through with me  
I'm waking up I can not see  
That there is not much left of me  
Nothing is real but pain now  
Hold my breath as I wish for death  
Oh please god, wake me  
_

He couldn't understand why he was so still, why he was, why he was nothing. All he understood in his weary mind, the only thought he was capable of capturing and holding on to, was that war had done this to him, that the war had chewed upon him and distastefully cast him aside. He could not feel but for pain, he could not sense his surroundings, he could not see.

Duo's mind did not know of the state of his body, the broken limbs, the scarred burns. Nothing registered, not the tube in his throat, not the needles in his arm, not the bandages that covered his many wounds. All he knew, was pain. Though he did not understand the thought, the wish to know if his legs were there, if his arm could move, he had a sense of what was still there. A sense that pain fed him. Weary of the nothingness, of the empty void he was part of, Duo desperately begged for the end.

He was the Shinigami, the god of death, he did not fear the darkness of that path, he did not fear what he saw as sweet oblivion as mercy. He only prayed that God could wake him from the wretched sleep he was forced to endure.

_  
Back in the womb its much too real  
In pumps life that I must feel  
But cant look forward to reveal  
Look to the time when Ill live  
_

Hilde sat on the very edge of the uncomfortable hospital chair, leaning as close to her precious Duo as she could through the maze of machines. She could not imagine, could never have though to imagine what it must fell like, to lay there, living only because of the things around you. With some other power providing you sustenance, with some other power giving you breath to fill your lungs. Sally had told her it would be like this, he would not live without the many machines. It seemed so much like an unborn child in it's mother's womb.

Hilde's shoulders slumped and her head fell forward, hr hands covering her weary tear stained face. She could not picture life without Duo there. She had tried once, in the brief moment of terror that enveloped her in cold when she first heard of the attack. Then she had cried, great heaving sobs with a pain in her chest, a physical pain caused by her sorrow and grief. She vowed to herself right then, she would not loose him, she would not let him go. He still lived and she would keep him with her. Her mind took her away from the sights and smells of the hospital and instead took her to a more happy scene.

She and Duo were together, simply enjoying each others company at their favorite restaurant. They'd just come from another day at the Junk Yard and were now enjoying a shared ice-cream sundae. It was another day for them, another day that they lived. And Hilde prayed it was there future, her hand holding desperately to that dream

_  
Fed through the tube that sticks in me  
Just like a wartime novelty  
Tied to machines that make me be  
Cut this life off from me  
_

The doctors quite bluntly informed his friends that Duo could not live without the feeding tube, could not live with out the oxygen the supplied him with. War had torn his body, brought him to the hospital. His energies, and the steps necessary to keep his heart beating had made him a novelty.

Wandering through the emptiness that was his world, Duo did not know of the life that was attached to him. He did not know of the machines that were as much a part of him now as his own breathing had been since his birth.

_  
Hold my breath as I wish for death  
Oh please god, wake me  
Now the world is gone I'm just one  
Oh god, help me hold my breath as I wish for death  
Oh please God help me  
_

In the painful aftermath of his death, Duo was all that there was. He couldn't feel the mattress under him, or the blankets draped gingerly over his body. He couldn't fill the chill of the regulated room temperature. The world was gone, there was only Duo, only his confused mind, lost in himself.

_  
Darkness imprisoning me  
All that I see  
Absolute horror  
_

Hilde looked up from Duo as she heard the door open and Sally quietly ushering their friends into the room. Sally had a tight grip on Wufeis hand as she was forced to see Duo as he was after all the painstaking work on the operating table. Relena gasped in horror and turned her face into Heero's chest. She could not bare to look to Duo as he was now

_I cannot live  
I cannot die  
_

"Surely he cannot-" Quatre's soft voice broke and he swallowed back the bile that rose to his throat at the sight of his close friend. Trowa's warm hand on his shoulder silently comforted him and he continued with what he needed to say. "Surely you cannot force him to live. This isn't living!" He cried softly, tears welling in his clear blue eyes.

"NO!" I can't let him go! He's still alive!" Hilde shook her head in violent defiance. "He can't leave me," her defiance broke and she collapsed back into the chair, trembling with pain and fear. Heero was forced to let Relena go as she determinedly walked away from his support and moved to Hilde. She refused to look at Duo as she stood beside his girlfriend. The two women hugged tightly, sharing the pain. But it was Heero that spoke.

_Trapped in myself  
Body my holding cell  
_

"Look at Duo Maxwell Hilde," Heero ordered softly. Bewildered, Hilde looked over Relena's shoulder to the still figure in the bed.

"No, that is _not _Duo," Heero ground out, his hands fisted.

When Hilde turned dark eyes on him he continued. His words making Relena stare at him. He could not say such things, they were too painful. But the look in his eyes kept Relena from speaking, so she simply held her friend to give her support.

_  
Landmine has taken my sight  
_

"His sight is gone, burned in the blast when the fuel tanks exploded," the occupants in the room winced as he continued, "He can never go back to the way he has lived all his life. No blind man can be a pilot, and certainly not one of us," Heero's voice was bitter.

"The Junk-" Hilde began though there was little fight in her voice. But Heero cut her off curtly.

"The Junk Yard? What could he do in the Junk Yard? He can't."

_Taken my speech_

_Taken my hearing  
_

"He'll never tell a joke again. Or make one of his rude comments," Heero almost smiled at the memories, "and he'll never hear the laughs he's worked to preserve since the beginning.

_Taken my arms  
Taken my legs_

_Taken my soul  
Left me with life in hell_

"His body is broken, it is not a simple injury he will heal from and carry the scars of. This has taken his soul." Heero stopped as Relena finally opened her mouth.

"Only look at the shell of the man you loved, the man we all loved. He's not there anymore Hildy," Relena murmured, silent tears coursing down her cheeks. Hilde nodded, her chin trembling and her breath coming in sharp painful gasps.

Sally moved forward and placed her hand on Hilde's shoulder, "Are you ready to let go?"

Hilde shook her head, her eyes closed from her pain. "No, no I'm not." She opened her eyes and looked first to Relena and then stared at Duo, "But I'm going to have to. For him."


End file.
